


On Naming

by jenny_of_oldstones



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Etymology, F/M, Languages and Linguistics, Mild Sexual Content, Names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-10 22:19:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10448790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_of_oldstones/pseuds/jenny_of_oldstones
Summary: Jaal asks the crew of the Tempest what their names mean.....Some are more forthcoming than others.





	

Three days after Jaal boards the Tempest, the Cultural Center on the Nexus forwards him a compiled lexicon of Milky Way languages. It downloads to his Initiative-issued omnitool and interfaces with his visor to provide overlays with translated readouts.

It’s helpful for most things. Less so for people.

“I understand that humans give their children names with literal meaning. So. Liam, your name—what does it mean?” They sit together in his room in the cargo hold. Liam fills a crack in a water purifier with a silicon sealant.

“Uh, ‘short for William?’” A bubble in the sealant bursts and speckles the plastic of the container. He wipes it away with his thumb. “I don’t think it means anything on its own.”

“Your name is short for another name?” Jaal shifts on what he suspects is a pile of dirty laundry under a tarp.

“Sure. Lots of people do that. Isn’t Jaal short for something?”

“It is not.”

“Well, my mom picked it because she liked the sound of it. Dad always said it was because she fancied this bouncer at the bar down the street where we lived. His name was Liam, too.”

“That’s….incredibly casual.”

“Are all angaran names serious, then? No, ‘let's just throw a dart at the baby name book and see what sticks?'”

“It is more complicated than that.”

How to explain angaran onomastics? All members of the family choose and agree upon a child's name. Every time a name is spoken, it evokes subtle notes and bandwidths of meaning, entire spectrums of feeling implied in connotations and inflections, like a rainbow of color that spreads from hindbrain to cerebral cortex in subtle, shifting patterns. A name is not only a name, but a watermark of all that a family feels, hopes, and desires for the one they love. It is experienced rather than meant.

“A name is important to the entire community,” he finally settles on saying. “I simply wished to know what yours invokes.”

Liam shrugs. “Whatever you want it to, man.”

Later, Jaal messages the Initiative Colonial Repopulation Committee and asks for a database of baby names. They happily forward him a massive one from the most recent pre-launch Citadel census.

**LIAM: short for WILLIAM, from the Germanic WILLAHELM, from the elements “will, desire, helmet, protection.”**

A will to protect. A defense against those who would know him better. It fits.

 

* * *

 

“Gil.” The baby name database flickers in Jaal’s visor. The emission waves of the drive core distort the words subtly in his vision. “Is short for Gilbert?”

“Well, don’t _tell_ people that.” The engineer works below the floor plates with only his back visible. “Bad enough that it’s on my personnel file. Pass me the ion torch.”

Jaal surveys the tool box, then selects a plastic-capped device that clinks in his hand. He passes it down.

“It seems a bold name. 'Bright pledge,’ from the Germanic  _gisil_ , meaning 'promise' or 'hostage'—”

“I’m starting to feel like a hostage,” murmurs Gil.

“You dislike your name?”

“Gilbert was my dad’s name, and his dad’s name. A whole long string of ‘bright pledges’ to nothing and no one.”

“I see." Gil’s tone is glib, but holds a razor’s edge of resentment. The man is hostile in ways that are difficult to discern sometimes. "Would it not be possible to change your name? You are far from any other Gilberts here.”

“Could you change yours?” asks Gil.

“Angarans never change their names unless they become exiles.” The tapestries and tie and bind through naming are too tight and complex to unwind otherwise. “So, no.”

“Well, I’m used to Gil, thanks." The ion torch waves at him from the floor plates. "Don't go spreading it around.”

“I won't.” Jaal searches the database on his omnitool. “Brodie, it says here, is derived from the Gaelic ' _broth_ ,' meaning ‘ditch’ or ‘mire’—“

“I appreciate you reminding me my last name means mud, but are you sure you’ve got nothing better to do?”

 

* * *

 

“You do not know what your name means either?” says Jaal.

“Nope.” Vetra’s legs are kicked up on the hump of a dead krogan. The Kadara sun is brutal, and the shade from the Nomad can only do so much. Ryder’s skin perspires at a rate that is alarming, though her face remains stony as she listens to the account of the salarian researcher they just saved.

“It's not listed in the database,” said Jaal. “Is it common for turians to invent names?”

She makes the ugly sound that passes for her laugh.

“Adherence to convention is a hallmark of your culture then,” he says.

Vetra blows dirt from the chamber of her rifle. “Maybe it was a city where my dad's favorite pawnshop was. Or maybe mom just liked the sound of it. I never thought to ask, and now there’s no point. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Your sister, her name is meaningless as well?”

“Sidera,” says Vetra with certainty, “means 'stars.'”

 

* * *

 

“'Suvi' means ‘summer’ in Finnish. My grandmother was from Oulu. She was the director of hydraulics for the whole city. When I was born, she sent my mother a bouquet of dried celandine. Celandine usually dies before the end of spring, but these flowers had hung on. ‘A late flower for a late summer baby.’ And so they named me Suvi.”

Jaal sits in on the bunk opposite her with a cup of tea in his hand. He cannot drink it, but the aroma soothes and clears his sinuses. She takes it back from him eventually and starts to drink it herself.

“Feenlund...” Images and captions of the country’s history and culture flash in front of his eyepiece. Moomins. Icebreakers. The Helsinki Stock Exchange. “Is that why your voice is modulated differently from other humans?”

“Oh, no, I grew up in Glasgow. I only saw my grandmother a few times as a kid." She sips her tea. "I visited her before I left for the Initiative."

"That must have been a comfort to her."

"I think so. We sat on the back porch at her lakehouse and talked the whole weekend. She was so frail then, just being outside in the sun made her feel better. The porch overlooked this field of wildflowers that stretched as far as the eye could see. That part of the world is so barren in winter, but for a few weeks in the spring, everything wakes up like nothing you've ever seen...”

Suvi slowly slouches. Like a tire whose air has sprung a leak. 

“Thank you for asking, in any case. I'm a little tired. I think I need to lie down now.”

 

* * *

 

“I don’t know why you keep asking,” says Cora. “Most people couldn’t tell you what their name means if they tried.”

The Nomad bounces on the rocky terrain of Elaaden. Despite the heat, Ryder is bundled in the driver seat, the seat raised and pushed forward to accommodate her small size. She looks like an angry child behind the wheel.

“Consider it my way of getting to know my crewmates,” says Jaal. 

“Can’t you look it up yourself?” asks Cora.

“Yes, but asking in person has been….very enlightening.”

“Well, I know for a fact ‘Cora’ doesn’t mean anything on its own.” She sways a little as the Nomad takes a tight turn. Her hand raises and grips a hanging strap. “It’s one of those names that somebody made up a long time ago for a book that flashed in the pan.”

**CORA: Latinized form of KORE. Introduced and popularized as a given name by James Fenimore Cooper in his novel, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1826).**

Jaal decides not to tell her that, in angaran culture, to name children after fictional characters is considered the height of gauche.

“But I do know it’s sometimes short for other names, like Cornelia, or Cordula.” Cora makes a face at the last one. 

“'Cordula' means 'heart,'” says Jaal, reading the entry. “It suits the brave one you have.”

That earns him a smile.

“What about you, Ryder?” Cora turns her head to their driver. “I bet there’s a story behind your name.”

Ryder says nothing. The Nomad struggles up a dune. She downshifts, and the bottom of the rover rumbles as the six-wheel drive kicks in. 

“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard your first name,” says Jaal.

“It’s—” says Cora.

“No,” says Ryder.

“But—”

“No.” 

For such a tiny woman, she can be oddly terrifying. The Nomad plunges down a steep embankment without warning.

Cora frowns and shrugs at him, looking back out the window at the endless array of dunes. Jaal hums in his sub-vocals and grips a hanging strap as well.

 

* * *

 

Ryder’s first name, he learns later from her personnel file, is Tullia.

He reads the database entry late one night in bed in his quarters on the Tempest. Afterward, he let out a breath, takes off his visor and lays it on the pillow beside his head.

**TULLIA, from TULLIA MINOR, the last queen of ancient Rome. A woman who murdered her father for his throne.**

 

* * *

 

"Nakmor Drack." Acid rain spits on them from ragged clouds. Havarl is dusky and dim at this hour, and very wet. They tramp through the jungle in search of lost scientists, and the Krogan walks in front of them, stomping plants underfoot. "I have noticed that most krogan names are very emphatic."

"DRACK," says Drack. "Sounds like a punch in the mouth. I like it like that."

"There is not much information on the history of krogan names in the Citadel database."

"Can't imagine they ever asked us. Even if they did, krogan aren't big on sharing." A carnivorous vine makes a lung at him, and he snatches it in midair. "Our clan names are what matter. 'Drack' probably came from some genealogical tablet from ancient Tuchanka the shaman consulted when I was born. Or maybe it was the sound she made when she stepped in pyjack shit that morning. Who knows. Not much use for anything now except yelling before a shotgun blast."

"A painful reminder of your people's lost culture," says Jaal.

"What? Don't read into it, kid." The thrashing vine snaps in his grasp and goes limp.

"The situation simply has the ring of familiarity, that's all," says Jaal. "Much of angaran culture is what we scavenged from the era before the Scourge. It leaves one feeling half-finished, at times."   

Ryder gives him an odd look. The inside of her helmet is opaque with condensation. "You've never talked about this before."

"You," says Jaal, "never asked." 

 

* * *

 

The names of those he has lost are carved into his heart. His father, Lethaan Gol Darav. His uncles, Yelden and Suriv. Friends, cousins, lovers, classmates. He carries their names like scars inside him and tears them open only when he must remind himself of what he fights for. A healed yesterday. A better tomorrow.

He used to think he carried them out of love. Now, after Voeld, he knows it is duty.

The kett do not have names.

They erase the names of the angara they mutilate. The steal their lives, burn their pasts, and leave only a husk behind.

He collapses beside the body of the kett who was once one of his people. The pain he feels is like a lance that pierces every hurt inside him. Those he has lost. Those he can't stand to lose. Sahuna. Teviint. Finn. Etta. Lathoul. It's too much to bear, _it's too much-_

Ryder puts a hand on his shoulder. Her grip is solid and draws him back to the present. She squeezes once, then walks a few paces away and guards him from the sight of the others.

When he finds his composure, he follows her out into the fray.  

 

* * *

 

“Lexi,” the medic informs him while applying freezing foam to the new gouge on his cheek, courtesy of Akksul, “is short for Alexideria. Which, trust me, was old-fashioned even when I was young.”

She lasers away the already calcifying foam with her omnitool, removing also the dead flesh of his scorched cheek.

“It was the name of a Justicar from an old serial my mother loved when she was a girl. Trash, but she ate that stuff up. People will read just about any saccharine drivel to get them through the hard days.”

“There is no shame in that,” says Jaal. He winces when she burns him with the laser. “And T’Perro?”

“Asari naming conventions usually have a hard consonant antecedent before the proper surname. It used to designate clan origin on Thessia, though with the advent of circumnavigation and space travel it simply became a tradition. It hardly means anything now.”

“So, Peebee’s last name—”

“Means I could trace my roots to the B’blah-blah-blah region in the whatever hemisphere of the whoever ocean. If I was loaded on dihydrocodeinone and trying to kill myself with boredom.” Peebee leans against the entrance of the infirmary and takes in the view of him on the med-lab table. Jaal, for a reason he can’t place, covers his chest with his hands.

“Pelessaria, meanwhile,” says Lexi.

“Old news,” says Peebee.

“-is a small determined flower known to grown through packed winter ice—”

“ _Old_ news.” The asari scientist flounces out. Lexi rolls her eyes and scans a final disinfectant over his wound.

“Is there a reason why most people from your galaxy dislike what they are called?” asks Jaal.

“Most people from my galaxy dislike themselves. You just have to learn to make peace with who you are, and what you are." She pats his cheek. "There you go. One new scar."   

 

* * *

 

"'SAM' stands for Simulated Adaptive Matrix," says SAM. "Acronyms are common signifiers for virtual and artificial intelligence."

"It means what you are," says Jaal. "Yes, I understand that. Very angaran."  

"I have also logged thirteen-thousand, nine-hundred, and forty-seven potential names that use 'Sam' as an abbreviation," says SAM. "Would you like me to read them to you?"  

"That won't be necessary." Jaal lies on his stomach on an outcropping on Eos, observing a small settlement that has been taken over by outlaws. "Though, if you have a preference...."

"I do not," says SAM.  

"Cut the chatter." Vetra lies on her stomach beside him. Her eye presses to the scope of her M-92 Mantis. The sniper rifle is mounted on a tripod and draped in a beige camouflage tarp to reduce glare. 

"I was only passing the time," says Jaal. "SAM, if you could choose another name for SAM to stand for, what would it be?"

"As stated, I do not have a preference. However, I can randomize a selection."

"That might be interesting. Could you also-"

"Would you two pay attention?" hisses Vetra. "The Nomad is moving into position." 

The Nomad creeps behind a boulder and pops its doors. Ryder, Peebee, and Drack file out and advance on the prefabs. They check the buildings one by one, until Ryder gives the all-clear signal.  

"Tch." Vetra takes her finger off the trigger. "Empty. Our intel was wrong. Either that or they got wind that we were-wait." Vetra ducks her head to the scope again. "What the hell is she doing?" 

Jaal squints. The sound of a jump-jet draws his attention to a large building. Ryder hops from its roof to a cliff, then up to another cliff, then another. At the top, she pauses, and extends her hand to the empty air.  

"The Pathfinder is collecting eidetic triggers," says SAM.

"Translation?" asks Jaal.

"Memories," says SAM.    

 

* * *

 

It takes Jaal a long time to find Ryder on the Hyperion. 

A few techs direct him to the door to the SAM node. The room is, surprisingly, unmarked and unguarded. The doors hiss open and shut closed behind him. 

Ryder sits alone on the floor. SAM, or at least the representation of it, hangs like a blue heart in the middle of the room with beads of light crawling through it like ants. 

"Hello, Jaal," says SAM. 

"SAM," he replies. Ryder neither responds nor reacts to his presence. "You've been gone for almost five hours. We were starting to worry. Are you all right?" 

Silence. 

"Do you wish to talk about it?" 

She glares up at him. Her long braid is tucked into the hood of her blue and white Initiative jacket. "I never wanted to come to Andromeda." 

That takes him off-guard. "And yet here you are." 

"Yeah. Here I am." 

The room is freezing to accommodate the electronics. Jaal wonders how she can stand to sit on the cold tile. After a few moments, he takes a seat beside her. 

"It must have been difficult to leave your entire life behind," he says. 

"I was an Alliance researcher of Prothean fossil records. I was published, accredited, and on my way to becoming respected. So no, I wasn't interested in leaving." 

"You must have had a good reason." 

"Not really." Ryder stares at a spot in the wall in front of her. "My brother was the one who wanted to come. He was always looking for the next challenge, the next frontier. It was easy for Alec to sell him on Andromeda."

Alec. Not dad. Not father.

"I take it you were more skeptical," says Jaal. 

"Alec and I didn't talk much. The thought of traveling through dark space for six-hundred years based on nothing but a hunch and half-baked dream didn't appeal to me. If not for my brother, I would have stayed on Mars." 

Jaal nods. "You could not bear the thought of being separated from your family."

"Wrong again." 

Her glare intensifies. Ryder's face has always been, since the day he met her, a mask of rage. Now it struggles, as if anger has finally found an equal.  

"My mother died of a terminal illness. Alec created SAM to try to save her life."

"I....did not know that." He wonders if Ryder has only found out about this, too. "A noble idea."

"Oh, he was full of noble ideas. That's all he had to give, ideas."

Ryder clenches her jaw.

"He spent the last years of mom's life in his lab. She used to beg him to eat meals with her. She even broke one of his datapads when he wouldn't put it away at the table. Those last few months, whenever I visited, she was alone surrounded by beeping monitors, while Alec worked on his projects.

"When my brother told me he was going to Andromeda, I knew that if anything happened to him, if he ever got sick or hurt....All I saw over and over in my mind was him lying in a hospital bed hooked up to machines, while Alec, the _Pathfinder_ , buried himself in paperwork a world away.

"So I told Alec, I'll go. Even though I don't want to, even though I'm throwing my whole life away, I'll go because you can't be trusted to take care of our family. I told him that I hoped whenever he looked at me, all he saw was someone who thought the Initiative was a joke, and who was waiting for it to blow up in his face. I said, 'I hope I poison Andromeda for you, the way you poisoned home for me.'"

Her fists slowly uncurl.  

"And then he died," she says. "And my brother is in a hospital hooked up to machines while I run around the galaxy trying not to think about him."  

The cooling systems hum around them. Jaal reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. 

"You do yourself a disservice," he says.

"You don't know me well enough to say that." 

"From what I've seen, the kind of woman you are-"

"And what kind of woman am I?" She turns on him. He wonders, briefly, if she is going to hit him. But she is only Ryder, who is lost, and scared, and so very hurt. Her anger burns off her like a wildfire. He faces it. 

"Indomitable. Focused. Fond of torturing yourself."  

"You don't think I should? Everyone expects me to save us when I can't even help myself. Sooner or later, I'm going to fail, and they'll know exactly who could have fixed everything if the right people had gotten killed instead."

She looks at him, waiting. He realizes then that he is the first person to hear any of this. It makes him consider his next words with care. 

"If you were not here, I would not be here either. In every sense of the word." He leans close. "Please spare a thought for those who owe you everything, the next time you hurt yourself like this."  

She stares at him. A moment later she gets up off the floor. Her braid slips loose and brushes across his cheek.

He watches her march through the sliding doors. They hiss closed behind her.  

**ALEC. Latinized form of the Greek Alexandros, meaning 'to defend, to help.' Short for Alexander, most notably Alexander the Great of Macedonia, who conquered Greece, Egpyt, Persia, and parts of India. A man who died young and left his empire in ruins.**

Irony, it seems, runs in the family. 

 

* * *

 

"I'm thinking...Pico." Liam picks the pyjack up from the sofa in the observation deck where it sleeps and sits down in its place. "Because he's so tiny and cute, you know?" 

"From the size of the waste he leaves around the ship, that is not how I would describe him." Jaal takes a seat on the sofa opposite. "Perhaps 'Giga' would be more appropriate." 

The pyjack wraps its arms around Liam's neck and clings close to him. It blinks with wide, moist black eyes. 

"Well, we can't just keep calling him 'space monkey,'" says Liam. "It's almost been half a year. Even I stopped calling you 'squid boy' ten minutes after you came on the ship. It's only fair." He scratches behind the pyjack's ears.

Half a year. Half a year, of course, means different things on different worlds, but the idea carries weight. He has been traveling for half a year with these people on this ship all around the cluster, saving lives, righting wrongs, shaping a new future for everyone. It seems impossible. In a way, it is.

Ryder's footsteps on the deck below electrify his attention and fill him with a sense of wellness. He knows who to thank.   

"So, Pico it is?" asks Liam.  

Jaal leans across and strokes the pyjack's soft, striped back. "My vote is for 'Lucky.'"  

 

* * *

 

“Her brother woke up today,” Kallo Jath tells him one morning, when he inquires into Ryder’s whereabouts. He awakened to find their ship docked at the Nexus. "She went to see him in the Hyperion cryo center.”

“I see.”  The Ryder sibling is named Antony, likely after some long dead and equally tragic figure of ancient human history.

“I can tell her you were looking for her when she comes back.” There’s a knowing uplift in the salarian’s tone that both embarrasses and delights him.

Fortunately, his time on the Tempest has taught him the art of deflection.

“Kallo….what does your name mean in your language?”

“It’s my family name,” says the salarian, surprised. He maintains eye contact while his fingers continue to type. “Jath is my given name, and means something along the lines of ‘a river that flows straight as an arrow’s path.’ Or so I’m told. These things tend to come down to us, whether we want them to or not.”

“Yes,” said Jaal. “I'm beginning to understand that.”

 

* * *

 

“So what’s your name mean?” asks Ryder

She asks the question from underneath him, in the tangle of her bedsheets on the Tempest. “Is this really the time?”

“My ship, my rules.” Her thighs squeeze his waist in a way that is entirely unfair. 

"Angaran names are not like human names." Or turian, krogan, or asari names for that matter. "My name simply means myself, and all that I entail. It does not have a direct literal meaning in our language." 

"It had to come from somewhere." 

"It's an amalgamation of several sources, actually." 

"Oh?" Her nails dig into the skin of his back. They're both sweating now. 

"The easiest to trace is a word in an older dialect that means 'blue.'" 

“Just blue?”

“It’s….more complicated than that.”

“The story of you.” She kisses his neck, and their bodies fit tighter together.

“There are many words for 'blue' in our language," says Jaal, a little breathlessly, when he's able. "But Jaal, as my mothers named me, is the blue of a cooking flame. Concentrated, useful, able to fit in the hand. As likely to burn you as it is to save your life.”

“Hmmm.” She arches her back and presses herself against him, drawing out the languor of the moment. “I can't imagine you burning anyone."

"Tell that to the kett." 

"Ha." She traces the scar on his face. "So you're the fire that burns the house down because the cook left her datapad on the range top?"

"Only if you're not careful."

"And if I'm not?"  

She's too quiet now. He knows her well enough to recognize the tenor of her silences and the meaning behind them. He catches her wrist in his hand and pins it gently against the bed. "Tullia Ryder. You are not a curse or a mistake. There is nothing you could do that would make me admire you less, or diminish my belief in you. That much I know to be true." 

She blinks. A tear rolls from her eye into her hair. He brushes it away, and for once, all anger drains from her face. 

The light of the Helius Cluster spins infinitely behind them. Her hand absently paws around the console, then hits the button that draws down the shutters, and leaves them to their dark.

 

* * *

 

"By the way," says Ryder in the hall the next day. "I forwarded your name to the Repopulation Committee. They're compiling a census of angaran names." She gives him a pat on the arm. "Figured you deserve a place."

He brings up the updated database entry on his visor. His huff of exasperation rumbles around the narrow corridor.

**JAAL: blue. As in 'he of the mysteriously fluttering blue cloak.' Also, "damn good butt."**

"It's not a cloak, it's a Rofjinn, and...." He sighs.  

His legacy now, he thinks and shakes his head. Whether he wants it or not.

He can live with that. 

 


End file.
